Colored folk
Negro
Black
African-American
You, sir, are exactly right, though the first two terms were used interchangeably for 150 years. MLK made the term, 'negro', the more politically correct of the two, then the radicals who followed, abolished both terms, favoring the simple, 'black', as a racial identifier.
Later, Obama's generation of leftist academics created the abominable 'A-A' appellation. I think I first heard it in the late seventies, and considered it a pretentious mouthful.
To show the silliness of this nomenclature, whenever I hear the A-A term bandied about, I am sure to refer to myself as a "British-Irish-German-Scandinavian-American."
Friends can refer to me as a BIGSA and I won't take offense.